AADrawing DrawingaaDay Day Keeps Keepsthe the Pandemic PandemicAway Away
VOLUME 8
Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art University of Nevada, Las Vegas Las Vegas, Nevada March 18, 2020–April 30, 2020
A Drawing a Day Keeps the Pandemic Away Volume 8
TABLE OF CONTENTS
04 About the Project 06 Make a rainbow out of things in your house 20 Draw something big
30 Draw your favorite coffee mug 38 Draw your daily chores 46 Draw something small
ABOUT THE PROJECT
The project is called A Drawing a Day Keeps the Pandemic Away. We created it on March 17th, which was the day when we realized that we weren’t going to be able to go back into the museum and continue installing the exhibitions we had been planning to open on March 27th. People were asking us what we, as an art museum, were going to do to reach out to the community during the pandemic shutdown and honestly we were wondering that ourselves, so we had an online brainstorming session and came up with the idea of posting a daily drawing prompt on Instagram. Anyone who wanted could respond to the prompt by posting a drawing and tagging us. Then we would add their drawing to our story feed and our highlights, so there would be a growing record of everything we’d received. At the end of the project we would turn the submissions into a catalog. Drawing a Day is not only something that gives people a connection to the arts community during the shutdown, it’s also going to become a historical archive. It took us less than twenty-four hours to come up with our list of prompts. By the next day our graphic designer Chloe Bernardo had created our title image and we were able to begin. Every day since then we’ve posted one of her prompt illustrations followed by a response from an artist. That’s our first picture of the
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day. After that we wait to see what else people send us. Anyone with access to Instagram can participate. We don’t judge the drawings. We hope that the regularity of our prompts creates a sense of grounding in the middle of the very tense and mysterious situation that we’re in. Ideally, we hope our prompts help people touch on some of the complicated feelings they’re having right now. We also appreciate it when we can see people are enjoying themselves. We notice when the same people send us pictures every day, and even though we don’t know most of them personally it’s nice to be able to follow their careers, as Pandemic Drawing artists, with the same kind of attention we would use if we were following the career of any of the artists we work with at the museum. Some of those exhibition artists have submitted drawings too. Sue Havens, for example, an artist who’s going to be creating new work for a show in our Workshop gallery in the future, sent us two drawings for the self-portrait prompt. We’ve had people tell us that the project is therapeutic, it’s comforting, it creates a kind of normalcy. And those are the kinds of reactions we were hoping for.
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MAKE A RAINBOW OUT OF THINGS IN YOUR HOUSE
April 22, 2020 Brooklyn-based artist Amanda Browder (@browdertown) came to Las Vegas as the UNLV Department of Art’s inaugural Transformation Fellow. Over the course of several weeks she created a huge fabric sculpture for the university’s Archie C. Grant Hall building and a series of smaller multicolored works with the local print studio Test Site Projects (@testsiteprojects). Gem VI, 2019. Monotype watercolor on muslin cut and reassembled
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and mounted on Somerset paper. Browder’s draped fabric sculptures typically cover entire buildings. When Test Site Projects invited her to work with them on a series of prints she adapted her patterns of stripes and arrows to a smaller, two-dimensional scale, coloring the fabric, cutting it apart, and assembling it in collages.
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Land of Hidden Gems, 2019 by Amanda Browder @browdertown 8
by Tina Niswonger @cniswonger51
by Martin Hackett @thereverendellipsisbang
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by Beverly Neas @vegasmammy
“A soft sculpture made up of 144 plastic mesh scrubs” by Eri King @eriking
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by Anne Savage @whymomsavage
by BE Gutierrez @begutierrezart
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by Elia Neeley
by Eva J. Scoville @ejscoville
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by Kim Garland @kimberlina_garfunk
by Joshua Kingston @mascotdevelopment
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by Shaun Weston @shaunwestonart
by Christel Polkowski @sightbeyondsight
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by Hope Watson
by Faye Stoelting (video)
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by JW Watson (age 12)
by Meghan Coleman
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by Paige Bockman @pgbockman
by Kristi Watson @ms_watson_art
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by Allen Linnabary @blizzard517
by Joy Montano @kauaibabygirl109
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by Amanda Browder @browdertown
by Ben Savage
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DRAW SOMETHING
BIG April 23, 2020 JW Caldwell painted this T-rex for his Dino Might exhibition at Springs Preserve last year. Swipe through to see the full picture. “My friend’s daughter … had to touch the teeth to make sure it wasn’t dangerous,” he writes, “she liked it once she confirmed it wasn’t going to eat her.”
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by Tina Niswonger @cniswonger51
by Joshua Kingston @mascotdevelopment
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“Tower of the Americas, San Antonio, TX” by Mariane Campbell @froggydoesart
“U.S. Postal Service ... with 633,108 employees today” by Beverly Neas @vegasmammy
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“An enlarged recipt hand-drawn with colored pencil on paper� by Eri King and Daniel Greer @eridanstudio
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by Chris Mempin @mempinman
by @whasg00dy
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by Shaun Weston @shuanwestonart
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by Dan Hernandez @xdan45x
“Andre the Giant” by Cat Dixon @mskittylv
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by Eva J. Scoville @ejscoville
by Christel Polkowski @sightbeyondsight
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by Joy Montano and Ilyana @kauaibabygirl09
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DRAW YOUR FAVORITE COFFEE MUG
April 24, 2020 “This is ... a continuation of my earlier video works that engaged with the human body, bodily experiences and emotional states such as, anxiety, violence, fear, sexual experience, etc,” writes Nanda Sharif-pour (@nandasharifpour). “There are other mugs that I like to use more often, but rather than a mug that only myself had a sense of familiarity towards, I decided to go with one that everyone was familiar with. I like to use the social memory in my works and through something familiar, introduce the viewer to the unfamiliar world of my work.”
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The mug is “a souvenir of a place that no longer exists (Riviera Casino). … In the current situation of isolation and the changes applied to the usual social structure, we no longer experience things the way they used to be. Vegas is no longer the place it was, and all that is left are our memories, fantasies, spaces, objects and the way we relive them within our domestic private spaces.” Click this link to watch the video: www.instagram.com/p/B_XsWxznrEn/
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by Eva J. Scoville @ejscoville
“My Mug� by Martin Hackett @thereverendellipsisbang
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by Bailey Hart @baileyinwonderland
by Joy Montano and Ilyana @kauaibabygirl09
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by Cat Dixon @mskittylv
by Shaun Weston @shaunwestonart
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by Beverly Neas @vegasmammy
by Tina Niswonger @cniswonger51
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by Olivia Napa @xativ_
by Joshua Kingston @mascotdevelopment
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by Christel Polkowski @sightbeyondsight
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DRAW YOUR DAILY CHORES April 25, 2020 “Lately, chores have offered me a way to cope with everything that is going on. Simple tasks like taking out the trash or doing laundry become events to look forward to,” writes Emmanuel Muñoz (@chilaquilesdemanny). “They help me remember that some things are still normal. I was inspired by my colleague Chloe Bernardo (@cbernardo_design), to create a series of colorful digital collages that show some of my daily chores, and the idea that even in chaos, there can be order.”
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gettinggreasy by Emmanuel MuĂąoz
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scrubthoroughly by Emmanuel MuĂąoz
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trashday by Emmanuel MuĂąoz
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“Mother/daughter brooms and dustpan” by Christel Polkowski @sightbeyondsight
“Tired of Chores” by Beverly Neas @vegasmammy
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by Shaun Weston @shaunwestonart
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by Tina Niswonger @cniswonger51
by Joshua Kingston @mascotdevelopment
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by Marianne Campbell @froggydoesart
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DRAW SOMETHING SMALL
April 26, 2020 Mikayla Whitmore (@mikaylawhitmore), On My Own, 2019. Whitmore found this fly impaled on a cactus thorn in her mother’s garden and photographed it with a makeshift paper backdrop. Ten months later she photographed the fly again.
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“Crab claw” by Amy Talluto @talluts
by TIna Niswonger @cniswonger51
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by JW Caldwell @thisisridiculous13
by Joshua Kingston @mascotdevelopment
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“A peanut study” by Christel Polkowski @sightbeyondsight
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by Eva J. Scoville @ejscoville
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by Beverly Neas @vegasmammy
by Sue Bunyan @sbunyan
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by Shaun Weston @shaunwestonart
by Cat Dixon @mskittylv
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“Amargosa Pupfish” by Marianne Campbell @froggydoesart
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THANK YOU This is the first time we’ve organized a communal social media project of this scale and we couldn’t have done it without you. Thanks to our colleagues, particularly the Barrick’s graphic designer, Chloe Bernardo, who created title illustrations for every single one of the forty-four prompts. Thanks also to our Instagram team: LeiAnn Huddleston, Alisha Kerlin, Emmanuel Muñoz, and D.K. Sole. Thanks to Paige Bockman and Dan Hernandez, who provided behindthe-scenes support. Thank you to the artists who allowed us to feature their art with each of our prompt posts. In some cases you created entirely new works for us to share and we’re grateful. Last, but the opposite of least, the most important thanks go to the contributors, everyone on Instagram who drew and collaged and filmed and painted and photographed it all and tagged us (or emailed it to us) so we could share it with the world. You are the best. 56
Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art Alisha Kerlin Paige Bockman DK Sole LeiAnn Huddleston Chloe Bernardo Emmanuel MuĂąoz Dan Hernandez Designed by
Chloe Bernardo